


A Cerebral Accident

by Mums_the_Word



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Gen, Paranormal, Premonitions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 16:03:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10338562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mums_the_Word/pseuds/Mums_the_Word
Summary: Will McEvoy was born with the unique ability to foresee future events. Although many people would consider that to be a miraculous gift, Will considered it to be a curse.





	

 

      “A cerebral accident”—that’s how Will McEvoy always thought of his gift, although sometimes he deemed it a curse. When all the twisting helixes of the DNA molecules became entangled during his conception thirty-six years ago, he pictured spotted dice noisily knocking together in a plastic cup during a childhood game of Yahtzee. When the little white cubes were spilled out onto the table, ultimately, that is who he became. Regardless of how it had all happened, that genetic game of chance had caused alterations in Will’s cerebral cortex that made him special—very special. Perhaps you may want to know why that was. Well, to put it into a nutshell, he knew things would happen before they actually became a reality.

     When he was older and more curious, he had done some research into this strange phenomenon. Erudite researchers had studied the concept and termed it “precognition” or “prescience.” Ultimately, they all considered it to be a bunch of bunk—a charlatan-like flair used to dupe people. However, Will would also discover that early in the 20th century, Albert Einstein, the father of relativity, had gone on to develop another theory stemming from the E=mc squared one. This new and novel idea that the genius scientist called “general relativity,” stated that matter causes space to bend or curve. When space curves, he alleged that time would curve as well, and his theory became the basis of many science fiction stories about time travelers.

     Will was anything but a brilliant scholar, so he made it easy for himself to understand. He envisioned “time” like those grooves on an old vinyl record. He then pictured himself hopscotching back and forth along the different continuums. Physically, he certainly remained firmly entrenched in his own space and was no voyager into the future or the past. What he actually did experience from time to time were gauzy visions that occurred during dreams. However, during his waking hours, all that he sometimes intuited were nebulous feelings of foreboding that made his pulse speed up and the hair on the nape of his neck tingle. He had learned to heed those omens.

     Will had begun making his predictions early in his childhood, but being the youngest of four rambunctious boys, his prophecies were either ignored or drowned out by his older brothers’ louder voices. They totally discounted their six-year-old sibling’s unshakeable prediction that the New York Giants would win Super Bowl XXI. After all, everybody already knew that was a foregone conclusion. The pregame stats of 17 wins and only 2 loses favored the Giants over the Denver Broncos, and Quarterback Phil Simms did not disappoint, handing off the ball in the closing seconds of the fourth quarter to Ottis Anderson for a two-yard romp into the end zone that would put the final nail in the Broncos’ coffin.    

     Actually, it wasn’t Will’s oblivious family who would notice his gift. It was his third-grade teacher who initially perceived his uncanny ability. She, too, had discounted its significance at first. One Monday, she was giving out classroom chores for the upcoming week. Will had volunteered to be a hall monitor, but then also offered to take over Liam’s job as a library aide.

     “Liam’s going to be sick for a while, Mrs. Barkley,” Will claimed with certainty, “so I can do his job, as well as mine.” 

     The teacher didn’t give any undue credence to Will’s claim, even after Liam was indeed absent the next day and for the rest of the week. An upper respiratory bug was plaguing all the classrooms in the elementary school, with coughing, sneezing, and snorting playing like a constant symphony in every room.

     However, another prediction by her unusual student eventually creeped the teacher out, but she would not recognize the significance at first. Will had approached her at the end of the school day right before Christmas break, and it was hard not to notice the very serious expression on his young face. Even though Will did not share the details, the previous night he had experienced an extremely disturbing dream revolving around his beloved teacher. He saw the young woman begin to climb a flight of steps only to tumble through empty space as a cumbersome carton careened past her during the descent.

     “Please, Mrs. Barkley,” the young boy began earnestly, “don’t carry any heavy stuff up any steps.”

     That was the total extent of his warning, and the teacher reassured him that she was always careful on any stairs and hurried him along so that he wouldn’t miss his bus. She didn’t give his warning another thought.

    On a quiet Saturday after New Year’s Day, she began the tedious task of dismantling the holiday tree and nestling each delicate ornament into its own little slot in the bulky plastic tub. Her husband and his cronies were at the local gym making a dedicated effort to take off the extra pounds that they had put on over the back-to-back holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. She didn’t mind doing the job alone and actually enjoyed the peaceful solitude.

     Eventually, after denuding the tree, she lugged the cumbersome box to the second floor and then used the hanging chain to pull down the rickety set of wooden steps that led into the attic. She was halfway up those wobbly stairs when she lost her balance and found herself falling. She dropped the box and grabbed frantically for a handhold to forestall her frightening plunge. Unfortunately, she clawed only empty air, landing with a thud accompanied by the sickening crack of bone.

     When the teacher finally was able to return to her classroom two weeks later with her leg encased in a bulky cast, she was almost afraid to look Will in the face. Of course, the boy could not help but notice her fearful attitude, and it made him very sad. He really liked Mrs. Barkley, but now she didn’t seem to like him anymore. Maybe she thought that he was a freak, and perhaps he was exactly that. Will certainly didn’t want to be different. Like any other child, he wanted to be liked and accepted, so he internalized a valuable lesson and would keep future visions to himself.

~~~~~~~~~~

     Unfortunately, the dreams continued to plague him throughout his young life. He never saw “good” things on the horizon. Instead, these horror movie nightmares were scary forecasts of things to come in the near future.

     Will was only nine years old in April of 1990 when he awoke in a panicked drenched sweat one night. In his dream, he had seen two high school teenagers meticulous rigging firebombs and other explosive devices around a school before entering the classrooms and opening fire on unsuspecting teachers and students. The young boy worried that these faceless individuals had booby-trapped his own elementary school and feigned sickness to avoid attending for two days. Eventually, however, he had no more excuses and had to return to his classes.

     Will had no way of knowing that a few days later the tragedy would unfold at another school far away from his own. Shocked television viewers kept scratching their heads and looking for someone to blame for the carnage that left twelve students and one teacher dead at Columbine High School in Colorado. Some swore that it had to be the Goth culture, or the gun culture, or they pointed a finger at bullying or violent video games. Will felt the gooseflesh pop out on his arms, but he said nothing about his premonition because he just wanted to be _normal_ —whatever that meant.

      One would think that Will’s psychic ability would have enabled him to have all the important knowledge necessary to be an educated success story. Such was not the case. His precognition certainly did not afford him the answers to test questions, and during his senior year in high school, his performance on the SATs was abysmal. It soon became clear that there was to be no institute of higher learning for him in the future. So, the summer after graduation, an 18-year-old joined the military, intending that it would become his career.

     Not to be forsaken, the premonitions followed him through various deployments around the globe. He was stationed abroad at age twenty when his eerie dream sequence was a prelude to a pair of commercial jetliners flying into the Twin Towers. The week before it actually occurred he kept seeing a weird but somehow familiar cityscape take on a grayscale appearance as ash rained down from above and settled on people, rescue vehicles, and the desolate streets below.    

     When he was twenty-three, he couldn’t bring himself to ruin Christmas for other members of his squad by mentioning the massive wall of seawater that he witnessed crashing onto the land in December of 2004. The very next day after that holiday, a massive tsunami occurring in the Indian Ocean managed to claim 170,000 lives in Indonesia.

     There were other harbingers of tragedies that persistently unfolded in Will’s later years. One night in November of 2015, he saw innocent patrons in an intimate little French café in Paris suffer massive injuries courtesy of an Arab terror cell. He didn’t know if other people dreamed in color, but the pulsing red in his visions was very vivid as rivulets of blood made their way through the cobblestone bricks while maimed people moaned in agony.

     In 2017, Will, along with his fellow soldiers, fully expected to see combat in Iraq since former President Obama’s intelligence gathering organization had claimed that the war in Afghanistan was winding down. It was mandated that some United States forces would still remain behind in Afghanistan to consult and help train a polyglot mess of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Pashtuns, and Turkmen against that old bogeyman—the Taliban. To give them credit, the Taliban, who were as wily as jackals, were nothing if not opportunistic. Like an unchecked fungus, they suddenly began cropping up amongst the god-forsaken rocks and sand of this barren hell to spread their own vile brand of violence across the land. Now, for the American military, the line between consulting and fighting became increasingly blurred.

     So, thanks to that past faulty intel, Will found himself, along with the rest of his team, hunkered down in the town of Helmand, a province in the south of Afghanistan. It did not take long to figure out how the indigenous inhabitants in the dusty villages and tent cities filled with scorpions and sand fleas managed to survive. You joined either the army or the opium trade. Helmand is believed to be one of the world's largest opium-producing regions, responsible for around 42% of the world's total production.

     Those Iraqi males who chose military life were, to put it succinctly, undisciplined and savage, and none of the American soldiers trusted them farther than they could throw them. Will found his extrasensory perceptions on high alert every time that he got too close because these men were as dangerous and bloodthirsty as the other enemy was.

     Unfortunately, that other enemy was an elusive specter most of the time, and Will would feel spooked even when he could not see them. Quite often, he sensed that they were very close, but there was not a sign of them for miles. The puzzled young man finally figured it out one evening when his commanding officer related a tale about the Taliban tunneling under a Kandahar prison in 2011 and enabling almost 500 Afghan inmates to escape overnight. Now Will knew that the enemy was not on the horizon; the Taliban fanatics were under his feet.

     Against his better judgment, Will expressed his thoughts to his superior and nervously found himself point man in an effort to locate the entrances to those tunnels. Suddenly, there was more pressure from higher up the ladder because as a new year commenced, the Taliban were appearing as if by magic, attacking and taking over government checkpoints in the Sangrin district of Helmand. There were over 100 police and Afghan military casualties as the rebels carved inroads into the province’s infrastructure. 

     Thanks to Will’s intelligence gathering, a total of fifteen US airstrikes commenced over Helmand during a forty-eight hour period in February of 2017. The death toll was high and included many civilians who had aided the marauders by offering their homes as waystations in the convoluted maze of tunnels. For a time, it seemed as if the insurgents had been thwarted, but Will knew it was only a stopgap measure. They would regroup and begin again. At the end of his last tour of duty, he resigned his commission and was thankful to be escaping from all this madness.

~~~~~~~~~~

     Will was now a civilian in his mid-thirties with no marketable skills that would keep him with a roof over his head or groceries on the table. So, he borrowed some start-up money from his father and three brothers to buy a truck with a trailer and some industrial-sized gardening equipment. He would try to build a reputation as a landscaper by word of mouth in his hometown.

     Truthfully, Will really couldn’t call himself a bona fide landscape designer since he didn’t know one plant, shrub, or tree from another. Thus, most of his jobs entailed heavy lifting rather than drafting backyard sanctuaries adorned with patios and fountains amidst evergreen foliage and bucolic little ponds. Mostly, he planted what the customer wanted, where he wanted it. He dug lots of flower beds, spread around mountains of cedar chips and mulch, and filled the downtime by mowing and pruning what was already in existence. It was hard work, but he was fit and able-bodied and the money was good.

     However, Will lived in the Mid-Atlantic States that experienced four distinct seasons. During the long, cold, raw days of winter, there was absolutely no work for him to do that would bring in any income. It made him depressed as well as behind on his bills. By February, he was tired of being cold, and he was tired of being idle, so he scraped together his meager savings and took a trip to the Sunshine State. Will had a nebulous plan coalescing in his mind. Perhaps he could parlay his instinctual feelings into money if he were close enough to a subject to get a vibe.

     He made an impulsive decision and took an Amtrak train bound for Florida, with his ultimate destination being Hialeah Park, a thoroughbred racing venue with a prestigious history going back to the beginning of the 20th century. Famous personalities that Will only knew from history books had frequented the racing park in its heyday—characters like Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Elizabeth Taylor, and even Amelia Earhart right before she embarked on her disastrous around-the-world flight in 1937.

     Will found it to be a uniquely beautiful place with striking rococo architecture, a multitude of palm trees and exotic birds as well as sleek, agile four-legged athletes craning their necks at the starting gates. However, Will certainly wasn’t interested in sitting in the vast grandstand or even having lunch in the “Turf Club” while watching the action on CCTV. He needed to get up close and personal with the thoroughbreds to get a feeling about which one might be victorious over the also-rans. So, he headed for the paddock saddling area to try out his novel approach to forecasting the future. It was a bit tricky getting through the security, but Will had donned his army dress uniform, and, after showing proper photo ID, he was afforded the opportunity to watch the horses being brought into the enclosure to be readied for a very brief but furious romp around an oval.

     These tall, spindly-limbed creatures with rippled muscles on their flanks were beautiful, but Will sensed a certain degree of high-strung edginess in almost all of them. As a rule, they were far from docile, rolling their eyes and nervously prancing while flexing their thin ankles like boxers bouncing on their toes in the ring before the bell clanged to start the bout. He couldn’t get a read on any of them one way or the other.

     Finally, he decided that he might as well simply choose one that looked like he could outrun the competition. At the end of the day, Will concluded that he would do just as well if he simply picked a horse because he liked its name or because he was partial to the colors of the jockey’s jersey. After three consecutive days, Will’s little nest egg was dwindling and his occasional winning bets were definitely not making up the difference. Apparently, his “gift” only seemed to work on the “human” animal.

     Most of the United States was still caught up in the throes of arctic winds and snow, and Will had no wish to return home just yet and shiver his way through two more months. Instead, he signed up for a relatively inexpensive junket to Las Vegas. He found a cheap room to rent by the week far off the Strip and all its gaudy glamor, but he frequently made his way downtown to avail himself of the “all you can eat buffets” at the more prestigious casinos. He also tried his hand at gambling. Unfortunately, he found that he couldn’t predict the colors or numbers on the Roulette wheel or the cards in the flop of a Texas Hold ‘Em game. He was likewise uninspired at Blackjack.

     Of course, all of this was disappointing to Will, but, nonetheless, he found himself entranced by a thriving city that never slept. It seemed as if the almost 600,000 residents living in the Mojave Desert were always on the move. Very few were native to the Sunbelt area. Most had come here, like the early pioneers to the region, with the fervent hope of striking it rich—not with oil or gold, but rather with the turn of a card or the spinning wheels of a slot machine. Other transplants were aging Baby Boomers who lived in retirement communities in Clark County and nearby Henderson and Summerlin.

     Will discovered that both the entertainment and construction industries were always in need of more bodies and the jobs were plentiful. When he landed a position as a cement truck hauler at one of the mushrooming townhouse construction sites, he phoned his family back east and asked them to sell all of his landscaping equipment because he would not be returning home.

     Other fellow hardhat workers steered him in the direction of cheap furnished apartments with month-to-month leases, and he quickly signed a paper enabling him to plunk down his duffle bag and settle into his new digs. His neighbors were all hard-working stiffs just like him, most with menial jobs such as hotel maids and valets or restaurant staff at the casinos. However, there was a bright spot—actually quite a few in the apartment building. Many showgirls lived there as well. Most had at least one or two roommates to share the rent because, surprisingly, their salaries were not as substantial as Will had imagined.

     These young women were friendly and chatty, looking wholesome and fresh-faced without their over-the-top dazzling show makeup. They were all tall and lithesome, having taken ballet and tap lessons throughout their younger years, and they now compulsively practiced daily yoga to keep themselves agile. Some had meandered to this oasis in the desert from California after their dreams of being discovered by some movie director never came to fruition. Others were transplants from back east who had won the occasional chorus line role in a Broadway musical, but never the brass ring of stardom.

     Will was a kind and patient listener, so it wasn’t unusual for this female sorority to tell him all about their aspirations as well as their troubles. They felt safe with him. Although Will was a red-blooded heterosexual, he never hit on these trusting young women, and they came to regard him as a sweet older brother. Occasionally, they cooked for him, added his laundry to their own, or got him complimentary tickets to a show on the Strip. Will had used the last of his savings to buy a secondhand white Ford truck, and he returned their favors by driving them to and from work or the various neighborhood malls when he was available.

     Eventually, Will found himself drawn to one particular young girl who lived in his complex. She was newly arrived and had managed to acquire a job as a cocktail waitress at Caesar’s Palace. Since she was a recent hire, she was given the early afternoon shifts rather than the more lucrative evening and late night ones when tips from customers were much heftier, especially if the gambler was winning at the time. The nametag on her scanty costume said “Mitzie.” However, her real name was Mary Beth, a down-home type name bestowed on the petite, bubbly redhead by her Wisconsin parents. Will found that this cute young twenty-something was as unpretentious and naïve as her name suggested.

     Mary Beth never fantasized of a film career or her name emblazoned in lights on Broadway. For her, the ultimate dream was escaping the bland Midwest to become a Vegas showgirl complete with exotic fishnet stockings and egret plumes in her hair. Although she had an enviable figure, she had some catching up to do in the talent department. Thus, she dedicated herself to those dance and gymnastic routines that most of that ilk had already mastered long ago. Will certainly didn’t want to rain on her parade, but he had seen enough to know that her chances of success were extremely slim. She just didn’t have the panache or the sexy long legs. However, he kept his counsel and didn’t try to discourage her. He reasoned that the only way people were finally able to accept the truth was by learning the lesson the hard way.

     Nonetheless, he sought her company whenever they were both free, and she never seemed to mind when he made impulsive decisions to knock on her door and suggest an impromptu day’s outing. They enjoyed nearby trips to Lake Mead for picnics and the occasional boat ride. At other times, they rented ATVs to go zooming up and down the desert dunes. After Will had gotten a raise at work, he even splurged on a small plane ride for the two of them to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. He was the ultimate gentleman and was taking this slow, never pushing for sexual privileges at this precarious stage of what he imagined as a courtship. Mary Beth seemed content with their arrangement—or at least he thought so. Then, one day, it all came crashing down on Will. He berated himself for being as naïve as the girl that he thought that he was wooing.

     Mary Beth came home to the apartment complex one evening with a shiny little yellow Volkswagen Beetle. It was an old, vintage car that had been meticulously reconditioned, and it puttered along noisily just as it probably had in its heyday during the 60s. Will could picture psychedelic flowers adorning the exterior as it once chugged up the steep hills of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. Mary Beth was over the moon about the new acquisition, courtesy of her restaurant manager at Caesar’s.

     “He just gave it to you out of the goodness of his heart?” Will questioned her in a jaded tone of voice.

     “Yes, Will,” she answered nervously. “He’s been very good to me. He says that he has connections with the manager at the Luxor hotel and he is going to work a deal to get me in their show.”

     Will didn’t need his extrasensory gift to get the gist of the unspoken implications, and he suddenly felt like a fool.

     “Mary Beth, don’t be gullible and believe everything that people in this town tell you.”

     “He wouldn’t lie, Will,” she answered earnestly. “He promised that he _is_ working on it, but it’s just going to take some time and, meanwhile, I just have to be patient.”

     “And ‘ _meanwhile_ ,’ what else is he asking of you in return for all his _hard_ work?” Will sniped. “What favors does he expect?”

     “This is so unlike you, Will,” the young woman said softly with tears looming in her green eyes. “I thought that you would be happy for me, not judgmental.”

     The erstwhile suitor before her suddenly felt like a cad for upsetting this ridiculously immature and trusting girl. Adopting his previous sentiment of letting lessons be learned the hard way, he prudently decided to back off.

     “Just be very careful—with that car, I mean,” he hastily clarified. “You have absolutely no protection around you if you have an accident. The whole front end of that little tin can is nothing more than empty trunk space, and it’s too old to have airbags.”

     “I promise,” was the soft reply before the little redhead returned to her apartment.

~~~~~~~~~~

     Now Will tried his best to avoid running into Mary Beth at the complex. He chided himself for being just as much of a dreamer as this silly girl, imagining himself and her in a romantic relationship with a happy ending just over the horizon. How foolish was that?  He, too, had learned a hard lesson and needed to face facts. His future most likely would continue to be a solitary and nebulous one in which he blew through life like a brittle, sun-bleached tumbleweed, never putting down any real roots or developing a sense of permanency. Right now, he had a temporary roof over his head and the warm sun on his shoulders, so he wouldn’t pull up stakes just yet to become a vagabond once again. He continued to go to work each day, but he was also determined to live in the moment. His evenings became the time to unwind with the occasional amiable working girl and a bottle of his new friend—Jack Daniels. The prostitutes came and went, but his old buddy in a bottle stayed for the duration.

     Will didn’t consider himself an alcoholic, per se. He only drank in the evenings and on weekends, so even though he usually had the mother of all hangovers in the morning, he never missed a day of work. Occasionally, he added a little weed for relaxation, and it helped to blunt those feelings of wanting something more tangible and lasting than what he currently had in his life. The drug had its upside. It afforded him the lassitude of not caring about—well, anything.

~~~~~~~~~~

     It was bound to happen at some point in time, and it did several months later. Will almost collided with Mary Beth as she rounded a concrete corner of the building one afternoon. Both of her arms were laden with tall paper grocery bags that practically obscured her field of vision. As they literally bumped into one another, one of the parcels slipped from her arms. Suddenly, Will became very aware of the young woman’s condition. With a noticeable effort, he pulled his eyes away from her stomach and sought her green eyes that were wide with surprise.

     “Hello, Will,” the pregnant woman acknowledged him softly.

     “Mary Beth,” he responded noncommittally.

     Although she seemed embarrassed, to her credit, the flustered young woman smiled, squared her shoulders, and addressed the obvious issue head-on.

     “It’s a girl,” she murmured, “and her name is going to be Ann-Margret. There was an actress by that name way back in the 1970s that my Dad really loved. I googled her and the old photos from her heyday are over-the-top beautiful, and the bio said that she had even appeared right here in Vegas at the MGM Grand. My father never actually saw Ann-Margret in person, but he told me that she was as petite as I am, and she also had red hair like me. He swore that I look exactly like her when she was an ingénue making movies with Elvis Presley.”

     Will opened his mouth to respond, but found that he had no words to fill the void. When the silence lengthened, it was Mary Beth who forged ahead.

     “As you can imagine, I lost my job as a waitress at Caesar’s when I started to show and couldn’t fit into my costume. I’m now working in the housekeeping department at the Treasure Island Hotel. I’m going to keep on working until they tell me to leave or I actually go into labor in one of the guest suites that I’m cleaning.”

     “What about the restaurant manager at Caesar’s?” Will finally asked. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that he’s the father. Didn’t he step up to the plate when you told him about the baby?”

     “Not exactly,” Mary Beth answered as color flamed across her cheeks. “He told me that I was a stupid hick who thought that she could trap him into marriage. Actually, I found out that he’s already married, so, in a way, the jerk was right. I was very stupid and saw what I wanted to see rather than what was right under my nose. Now I want nothing more to do with that creep. I’m going to have this child and raise it on my own and he’ll never get to see her—not that I think that he’d even want to.”

     “Mary Beth, why not just go back home to your family in Wisconsin?” Will suggested.

     “I will eventually after the baby is born,” the young woman said as she looked down at her feet. “Right now I couldn’t bear to see the disappointment on my Mom and Dad’s faces if I showed up like this. Maybe after Ann-Margret is born, they’ll fall in love with their first grandchild and forgive me.”

     “I’m sure that they will,” the dazed man whispered. After all, he had already forgiven her.

~~~~~~~~~~

     Will found that he was impressed with the young woman’s determination to make it on her own. As he was leaving for his own job each morning, he witnessed Mary Beth laboriously spooning herself into that little yellow VW to go off to clean dirty hotel rooms. Against his better judgment, he again sought out her company in the evenings. Together they watched old sitcoms and reality shows on a small flat screen in her apartment while she drank milk and he sipped Jack Daniels. As before, Will found himself becoming mesmerized by the petite redhead and wanting more.

     “Why don’t we just get married in one of the little chapels around here before the baby is born,” he suggested intrepidly one night when he was half in the bag from alcohol. “Then you can put my name down as the child’s father on the birth certificate. When you feel up to traveling again, we can go to Wisconsin and I can do whatever the hell people do in Wisconsin—maybe raise dairy cows or make cheese.”

     Mary Beth rewarded him with a sad little smile. “But that would be a lie, Will, and I can’t live the rest of my life knowing that I was deceiving everyone. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to change your whole life for me.”

     “Not even if I wanted to?” Will asked softly.

     “Not even then,” she answered just as softly.

~~~~~~~~~~

     So, as before, the dynamic reverted back to just friendship, and Will had to be content with the arrangement if he still wanted her in his life. As Mary Beth’s pregnancy progressed, the awkward man went with her on shopping expeditions for a port-a-crib and tiny little pink outfits that looked like doll clothes to him. He massaged her swollen ankles at the end of her workday and offered to accompany her to Lamaze classes. That last offer sent the mother-to-be into a fit of giggles.

     “I just can’t picture you panting along with me, Will, and urging me to push. I need to do this alone if I ever want to be able to face you again with my dignity still intact.”

     To Will, the rejection hammered home the point that this relationship would never deepen, no matter what he offered. So, his nightly drinking was kicked up a notch, although he steadfastly refused to believe that he was now an alcoholic. He could still function and hold down a job, so he wasn’t in need of any AA meetings yet. If Mary Beth had any thoughts on the matter, she kept them to herself.

     Perhaps the overindulgence of liquor was responsible for the return of those torturous dreams that seemed to have been in remission since he had moved to Vegas. But now, they hit him with a vengeance once more. Over and over, he saw his beloved Mary Beth lying very still in that ridiculously tiny Volkswagen Beetle which was grotesquely crumpled around her. Her head was turned slightly to the side, her face was waxen, and her staring green eyes seemed to be mocking him as blood trickled down from a laceration on her forehead. A little puffy heart on a chain dangling from the rearview mirror was eerily swaying back and forth like a metronome in his field of vision, and he wondered if it was counting down the seconds that Mary Beth had left on this earth.

     Of course, Will never told Mary Beth about the nightmares. Instead, he began driving her in his truck back and forth to work, to the grocery store, and to her obstetrician appointments. Since it was getting more and more difficult to wedge her growing belly behind the wheel of the small car, the pregnant mother was grateful. Will was thankful that it had been so easy to dissuade her from riding in that yellow deathtrap. He thought that he could protect her from the fate that his premonitions had foretold. Perhaps it was Will who had to learn a lesson the hard way.

~~~~~~~~~~

     One late night, it took continual, forceful pounding on his door to rouse him from an alcohol-induced stupor. As he staggered to the living area in his underwear, he peered through the peephole to behold a distressed Mary Beth on his doorstep. Mindless of his disheveled appearance, Will quickly slide back the deadbolt and threw open the door. By this time, the girl was precariously bent over and in obvious distress.

     “I need you to drive me to the hospital, Will,” she gasped between contractions.

     “But the baby isn’t due until next month,” Will stated with absolute conviction. He certainly knew the expected arrival date, so surely his argument was a valid one, and it made all kind of sense to his befuddled mind.

     “Maybe Ann-Margret didn’t get that memo,” Mary Beth said sarcastically between clenched teeth.

     When he just stood like a statue, frozen with perplexed indecision, Mary Beth had to prod him into moving.

     “Will, please. We have to go. My water broke hours ago and the contractions have gotten really close together.”

     This plea for action had him scrambling for pants and a shirt and finally escorting Mary Beth down to his truck after making a quick pit stop to pick up her maternity go-bag. He settled her securely into the passenger seat and then ran around to climb behind the wheel himself. The engine of the vehicle turned over easily enough and they were actually rolling out of the parking lot when the Ford suddenly coughed and died. Will turned the key once again, but the ignition merely ground uselessly. It was then that the agitated man noticed the needle on the fuel gauge stubbornly stuck on “E.”

     “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he ranted as he pounded on the steering wheel and Mary Beth looked on in alarm with a question in her eyes.

     In teeth-gnashing frustration, Will explained to her, “Earlier tonight, some down on his luck bastard must have siphoned all the gas out of the tank.”

     As another contraction gripped the laboring mother and she stifled a moan, Will made a hasty decision.

     “Look, Mary Beth, I know that it won’t be the most comfortable ride, but we’ll have to use the Volkswagen to get you to Sunrise Hospital.”

     So, that is how a frantic journey began down a long stretch of darkened highway with Will at the wheel. Perhaps it was the unfamiliarity of the tiny car, or maybe it was the blinding glare from the high beams of an oncoming vehicle. One could even postulate that sluggish reflexes impaired by alcohol were the true cause. Whatever the reason, during the high-speed trip Will lost control of the Beetle, caroming off the concrete median separating the two sides of the highway. He reacted by valiantly fighting the steering wheel as the small car skidded sideways before somersaulting its way down an embankment.

     As the desert dust settled, the brilliance of a full moon illuminated the interior of the twisted wrecked vehicle. Miraculously, the tiny little red heart still swung back and forth from the rearview mirror, its arcing trajectory getting smaller and smaller as the seconds ticked by.

     Will was initially stunned, but then he managed to turn his head to peer across at an obviously injured Mary Beth. Time seemed to stand still, frozen in crystal clear clarity. For what seemed like an eternity, but really was less than a minute, the anguished man stared into her glazed eyes as he whispered forlornly, “I love you, Mary Beth, and I’m so, so sorry.”

~~~~~~~~~~

     Several weeks later, the caretaker at Woodlawn Cemetery on the outskirts of Vegas watched the white Ford pickup truck slowly meander its way down a narrow lane. The driver of the vehicle was familiar to him because of the frequency of the visits. This person came almost every day to make their way on foot to the very same grave. The observant cemetery custodian reasoned that whoever had passed away and was interred there must have been very special to merit such a single-minded commitment from the bereaved guest. The caretaker had been intrigued and had checked out the grave marker himself. The recently departed had been fairly young, so perhaps the recurrent visitor was a spouse or a sibling, or maybe even a lover. Even though the curious man had been a witness to this very sad ritual for days on end, he had no way of knowing that this would be the devoted mourner’s last visit.

~~~~~~~~~

     Mary Beth delicately laid the bouquet of larkspur and calla lilies down on the ground in front of the grave marker. She knew that they would wilt within the hour from the intense heat and sun, but Will deserved something special today. As soon as she had been able, the young woman had come to this peaceful place to be near him, to shed her tears, and to talk to him. It was exactly like that today.

     “I guess this is going to be ‘good bye,’ Will,” she said softly as she stared at his name chiseled on the granite headstone. “Ann-Margret is big enough to travel now, so we’re going home to Wisconsin. When she’s old enough to understand, I’m going to tell her all about you—what a wonderfully kind friend you were to me even when I didn’t deserve that kindness.”

     Pausing to blot away even more salty tears, the girl continued, “Maybe if we had met in another time and another place, it would have ended differently. It’s really so sad that we couldn’t have foreseen the future so that we’d know how it was all going to turn out. I guess we just have to learn things the hard way and live with the consequences. I’m going to miss you, Will, but I’ll keep you in my heart forever.”

      With a deep sigh, Mary Beth kissed her own fingertips and touched them to Will’s name on his tombstone. She could only hope that this gentle man had found peace somewhere in the hereafter. Then she turned away sadly and started walking back to the truck, determined to get on with the rest of her life.

    


End file.
